Baptismal

African American Review, Spring, 2004 by Carolyn Beard Whitlow

BAPTISMAL

   Run, Eliza ... run from Simon ...

   A slip of ice on the river--
   Current running, falls,
   Wounded rocks embedded,

   Bruised rivermouth agape.
   Bloodspools, strung waterbeads
   Skirt spindle thighs.

          Moiling--
   Gloam of huddled light. Touchfires.
   Wet breasts bound, anklegagged,
   Whiskey-breath communion.

   Broidered men in carpet slippers,
   Noose-neck ties; ruffled
   Staunch Sunday waists, the women,

   Next of local kin; issues loom large
   In the small hours of morning:
   Windstripped, clothesline hung

   Body dressed with two hundred stripes,
   Fresh cuts in every room. Home.
   Couch an overstuffed

   Tattooed stomach, coat
   Slouched back a chair,
   Grim chin and jaw,

   Holy bric-a-brac, doilies--
   Daguerreotype of memories saved
   In the tinny, gaseous air ...

Carolyn Beard Whitlow's poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Callaloo, among other journals. She is a professor of English at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.